Activists ready to target contest after reports from Amnesty and Human Rights Watch damn repressive regime of Ilham Aliyev Calls are growing for an international boycott of this year’s Eurovision song contest in Azerbaijan over concerns about the country’s poor human rights record and its clampdown on dissidents. Khadija Ismayil, one of the country’s few remaining investigative journalists, revealed last week that she had been the target of a blackmail attempt. Ismayil, who has been working on stories exposing dubious business deals in the oil-rich republic with connections to the ruling elite, has been called an “enemy of the state” by Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev. “On 7 March I received a letter to my home address with threats and blackmail,” she said

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